A Woman Commander-in-Chief Is a Truth America Can Handle
Originally published by Joan Johnson-Freese for the New Hampshire Bulletin
Is America ready for a woman president?
Americans should be beyond this question and yet it still surfaces on talk radio programs and maybe in everyday conversations you’ve overheard or maybe even participated in recently.
The 2024 election ought to be about electing a leader who will put country over self and specific plans to address issues, not a candidate’s reproductive physiology. The reality is that women have been shown to be equally and sometimes better able to recognize and successfully address today’s challenges, and to stand up to bullies near and far.
Those who question America’s readiness for a woman president often base their concerns on women’s leadership ability. But polls repeatedly show that the majority of Americans see women as every bit as capable of being good political leaders as men. Women succeed, and sometimes fail, just as men do, and are equally willing to address threats.
America faces challenges in the next years both from domestic divisiveness and a complex and volatile geopolitical climate. Both call for a clear-eyed, rational and realistic approach to the future, rather than one centered on an ego-dominated calling to return to an imaginary, glorious past where gender stereotyping placed women subservient to men. That didn’t work for the 9/11 Islamic fundamentalists seeking a return to the days of the Caliphate, and it won’t work for those in the U.S. pining for a foregone era of backroom abortions, lynchings, and a Gilded Age for the rich.